The New Mafia and Its Own “Teflon Don”

Like most everyone else I have been watching the daily soap opera in Washington, D. C. with a bit of astonishment and wonder about how far the Republicans will let this administration continue to embarrass itself and America with its shenanigans.

The fact is, and as I pointed out in my last article on the Republicans, most of them will put their party before everything else, even, Heaven forbid, God, for those who claim to believe. Then, however, as I was thinking about this, it began to sound oddly familiar.

From the 1920’s until the early 1990’s there was another group that was almost as bad as the current collection in Washington. This other group was well endowed financially as the current group of misfits and they were spread all over the country. They operated much like Donald Trump which was to deny the reality of what they were really doing while they were doing something else. But they, ironically, were pretty much scattered to the four winds in 1991 by, ironically, some of the same people, who are now trying to grab power in Washington.

In 1991 the Mafia was brought to it knees when it’s last major godfather John Gotti was finally convicted for a few of his notorious crimes. Gotti earned the nickname of the “Teflon Don” because of the inability of the government to get a conviction on him although it was common knowledge that he was “the boss” in New York and probably everywhere else in the country. Finally, he was brought down by one his closest associates Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano when the FBI put the pressure on him.

Now we have a new “Teflon Don” who is grasping at power and the question is will the FBI be able to stop him. This time it is “Teflon Don” Trump who heads up the newest and most dangerous Mafia like organization this country has even faced. Unlike his predecessor this Don has far more real power. As the FBI is closing in on him he fired the Director of the FBI. At first they lied and said it had to do with the handling of the Clinton investigation, but yesterday he acknowledged that it was over the Russian hacking of the DNC emails and the interference with the American voting process.

As I think back to when Trump won the presidency it all begins to make sense. When he formed his cabinet he did not select people who knew anything about the departments they were taking over, they were part of Trump’s idea of a group of people he could control and they would be absolutely loyal to him. Some of his first actions were to get rid of anyone whom he thought would not be loyal to him first. The Attorney General was the first to go and them practically all of the career people in the State Department. People that had been part of the government through as many as four different presidents and had proven their loyalty to the country first.

But, he was not finished because there were still nagging questions about the Russians and their contacts with him and his aides, and, of course, who could forget about family. I mean what is the Mafia about if it is not about family, right? I mean there is no one on his White House staff that has any prior experience working at that level. But, he installs his son in law as his chief adviser and gives his daughter an office in the West Wing though with no paid, official position. He also handles his meetings with foreign dignitaries at his golf clubs instead of the White House much like the old Don’s used to hold their meetings at their favorite Italian restaurants. So it is easy to see how he is living his life in style.

The tweeting is a new thing for a Mafia Don but that is just because it is a new thing period, plus the fact that most of the old style Dons tried to keep a low profile. Where the old Dons would send out a message through the ranks about someone who talks about “sleeping with the fishes”, this new Don tweets “you better hope that our meeting was not on tape.” It is a veiled threat but a threat nonetheless to try to intimidate a witness. Also, most of the old Dons knew the phrase, “I refuse to answer on the grounds of my fifth amendment rights,” this new one taunts everyone with mysterious tweets. It would likely take a half million tweets for the new Don to confess to all of his crimes, but now he has fears about associates that haven’t made the cut with him. Take Mike Flynn for example, Please take him. Flynn keeps sinking further and further down a rat hole everyday and at some point he, or the recently fired FBI Director Comey, may become this Don’s Sammy “The Bull”.

Who knows with this new Trump Mafia? He believes that he has all of his bases covered to set up his kingdom, but he is not quite there yet. No one outside the White House is kissing his ring just yet, but that may be next. We need to start picking up on the new mob’s lingo and how the work. They have had one small turf war and it seems that blood is thicker than ideology as Steve Bannon is finding out. We can only hope that someone pulls the rug out from under this new “Teflon Don” before he puts the country into bankruptcy